5 Ugly Truths about Video Game's Love Affair With The Guitar

It's seems like a very long time ago, but there was a time when video games discovered the guitar. Every young guitarist that that their dreams had come true. They could combined their passion for an instrument into the brightly colored screens and scrolling dots.


The Predecessors


Before there were guitar heroes or rock bands there was Parappa the Rapper. It was an early rhythm bases game (the same type of game that all guitar related games are). In this game you had to press buttons on a regular controller in a particular rhythm. It was basic idea wrapped around an interesting interface. The game featured well written original music... ok, so as well as you can write a song about frying French fries and the like, but hey, it was rather entertaining. I actually played this game before the big guitar boom in gaming.


The Explosion


For the most part I turned my nose up at most of the Guitar Hero games. I thought that I was going to avoid degrading my self by not picking up one of those plastic atrocities. Of course, the popularity of the games finally came to a point where it was impossible not to try. ...and I sucked. I was disappointed in myself. I knew that I would be able to crush this fake guitar with my amazing real-guitar skill. But it turns out that following a scrolling dot and pressing buttons doesn't directly correlate to playing the guitar. There was a time, after the peak of popularity that I sat down and played the Guitar Hero for a few hours. I progressed very little and was very frustrated. Real guitar for life...


The Aftermath


Guitar Hero and the other games that followed had their time. I think that it was a novel idea and actually credit the games for an increased interest in learning actually guitar. However, there is a lot of disappointment when an expert Guitar Hero picks up an actual guitar and then must start over from the beginning.


Conclusion


I never invested in these games. Of course this was a fad. It blew up, then it fizzled. There were product tie-ins and band tie-ins. It did introduce a lot of young people to classic rock and guitar driven music. That hasn't help stop the onslaught of electronic noise in 117% of pop music, but sometimes you just can't stop the musical equivalent of Adderall.

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